But Something Dear
by sparrowlately
Summary: The boys stop hunting, and nothing has actually ended. Warnings for depression, mental illness, mild self-harm, and some severely screwy Winchesters.


**Title**: But Something Dear  
**Rating**: PG-13  
**Words**: 3,291  
**Spoilers**: Vague, but for all aired episodes.  
**Warnings**: Depression, mental illness, mild self-harm, language, and very very messed-up!boys.  
**Summary**: The boys stop hunting, and nothing has actually ended. Written for this prompt.  
**Neurotic author's notes**: There are so many other things I should be doing, but here, I emerge from the hurricane's wake bearing fic! My weakness for secretly!screwed-up Sam is showing. That was a very alliterative sentence. Anyways, the title is from Byron's "Childe Harold's Pilgramage" ("None so desolate but something dear,/Dearer than self, possesses or possess'd/A thought, and claims the homage of a tear"). Cut text is from Shakespeare's _Henry IV, Part One_, which is incidentally one of my favorite plays of all time.  
**Also**: Friendly reminder I cannot write action for love or money, and I do apologize for that.

:::

There's no little house in the country, no junkyard or endless stretch of sun-bleached field, and there's no definitive moment when it stops. There's a gradual slowness, an increasing awareness of age and accumulating injuries. An ache that becomes so constant it starts to overtake everything else. A tiredness.

It's Sam, of course, in the end, who looks up over grey, cooling coffee one mooring in late summer and says, "There's this apartment."

It doesn't end where it began, and it doesn't end with a bang or with a whimper or with a last cigarette or in a blaze of glory or desperation or hellfire or guns. That's just the problem. It doesn't _end_.

:::

It feels like a game, at first, waking up in their small separate bedrooms, moving into their compact kitchen and making coffee. Sam feels like he's pretending, when he goes grocery shopping or does laundry and applies for jobs and takes them (one at the library, one at the pub; it's fitting). There's no Amelia or Jessica to make this real, just Sam, with his timecard and his grocery cart and his detergent and his key and his square, Spartan little bedroom off the kitchen, with the bed tucked under the window and the boxy cheap little dresser filled with clothes. They're props, and Sam is acting like some guy who is thirty-six and lives in an apartment with his brother and his _things_. He's Just Sam, who takes the bus to work and never wears a shirt that lets you see his tattoo, who jumps at little noises sometimes, who is polite and mild and can read people like open books. Sam who likes dogs and strong coffee, Sam who is good with his hands and good at memorization and who doesn't talk about himself much.

It's not a lot, but it's something, and Sam will take it.

:::

It's different for Dean. Dean has always been very good at faking coolness, faking social interaction, because it's something very foreign to him and he can imitate, he can learn to copy. But Dean can't lie to anyone who knows him, and he can't slide so easily into the role of Just Dean. They've both always known, this, and in the beginning Sam haltingly draws his brother out, takes him to dinner and watches the game with him and prods him until he applies for a job. It's okay, at first, even if Dean still can't sleep for more than a few hours at a time, still feels antsy working at the garage, still spends every second he's not in the apartment on guard, alert, scared.

There aren't any demons, or angels, or Leviathans. That's over, and Sam tells Dean so as often as he has to, which still isn't enough. The gates of Hell and Heaven are closed, for better or for worse, and the Winchesters will never again have to do that dirty work. There are ghosts and spirits and werewolves and poltergeists, things Sam and Dean hunted as children, and there are plenty of young hunters left to handle them. This is what Sam tells Dean, in his stifled, careful way, as he labels the pieces of tape over the line of phones in their kitchen—_FBI, CDC, police local, FWS_—while Dean sits at the table and cleans the guns they don't need anymore.

Sam wraps a piece of masking tape around his index finger and bites his lip, takes stock of his brother whose time on earth is only just beginning to eclipse his time in hell, who still puts on a big stupid grin and teases Sam sometimes, which is sort of extraordinary in and of itself. Or at least it ought to be.

They're alive, and mostly whole, which ought to be enough.

:::

The landlady's name is Karen. She has a big, round face, curly hair, and two little girls. She likes Sam, buys his little-boy-lost act in a matter of minutes. Dean doesn't trust her. Just like he doesn't trust any of Sam's friends from work, or any of his own co-workers, or his boss, or Krista who works Tuesdays, Thursdays, and weekends at the squat, warm little diner that some nights feels more like home than the apartment.

"Come on, man, tell me she doesn't seem off to you," mutters Dean, one day in early October as they leave the apartment. Following his eyes, Sam sees Karen perched on her stoop, mug in hand, watching as her kids play some kind of hopscotch game in the parking lot. She's got a magazine balanced on her knees.

"She…doesn't seem off to me," says Sam, honestly, and Dean looks at him with some mixture of incredulity and concern before he huffs and turns away, his narrowed eyes darting from Karen with her magazine to the two kids, who are giggling conspiratorially and wiping their chalky hands into each other's jeans. Sam smiles faintly, remembering the big box of sidewalk chalk Dean had bought—probably stolen—one summer, the fun he'd had out in the parking lots of motels and in Caleb's driveway. Remembers Dean sitting very still in the beating sun in a black t-shirt while Sam drew on his back, remembers Dean twisting to see his handiwork in the mirror and smiling, telling him how great it looked.

"I don't like her," grunts Dean, wrenching Sam from the memory of the chalk-dust smell and Dean's hand in his hair.

"Okay, Dean," says Sam.

:::

Dean has always been fidgety, but lately it's remarkable how difficult it is to get him to sit still. He's always checking things, cleaning, fiddling, disassembling, rearranging. Drumming the counter top. Picking at the tape that says _USMS_, checking the windows and the doors. It sets Sam's teeth on edge.

One night, after Dean's inspected every window twice and is working on a third round, Sam asks him, gently, what he's doing.

"Checking the salt lines," replies Dean absently, and it takes Sam a minute to react to that, and then he's off the couch and following Dean into his bedroom, heart lodged in his throat.

"Dean," he says, like that's going to be enough. Dean ignores him, bends to squint at his own windowsill, straightens to fiddle with the lock.

"_Dean_," says Sam, and Dean jerks a little and turns to him.

"I'm going to bed, Sam," he says, and when Sam just stands there in the doorway, feeling giant and clumsy and useless in this very small apartment, Dean gets a ragged sort of grin and says, "Nothin' to worry about, Sam. Nothing's gonna get you."

Sam nods helplessly and goes back to his own room, sits Indian-style on the bed under the window, runs his thumb over the old scar on his hand, thinks hard. After a moment he turns and checks the sill, finds a neat, unimposing little line of salt steady against stool. He's a little surprised he hasn't noticed it yet. And there's nothing wrong with it, he thinks. It might even be for the best.

:::

One night in the diner, in between glaring and Dean and smiling embarrassedly at Krista, Sam notices Dean picking incessantly at his fingernails. When his third _stop it _goes unheeded, he reaches across the table and tugs Dean's hands apart.

"Jesus, Dean," he sighs, taking in the scabs and peeling skin around his brother's nails. "The hell."

Dean pulls his hands away, looking down. "Dunno, man, lately it's all like"—he shrugs, shivers a bit, holds up his jittery hands and sort of wiggles his fingers—"y'know?"

_Almost_, Sam thinks, remembering in fractured pieces those endless days when his hallucinations consumed him, remembers the restless, constant fear right under his skin, but he doesn't say anything. Krista arrives a moment later with their check, and Dean drops all pretense and glares at her like she's personally responsible for every wrong with the world. Sam pays quickly and all but drags Dean home.

:::

"I don't trust her with those kids," says Dean one chilly morning as they both set off to work. Sam, taken aback, glances over to Karen the landlady's stoop, where she's fussing over her younger daughter's scarf.

"Ally and Clara? Her daughters?" Sam asks, just to be sure, and Dean nods, pursing his lips. Sam looks too, sees two bright-cheeked redheads with their hands entwined, chattering animatedly with their mom as she locks the door to the apartment. Sees Karen tug affectionately at Ally's braid, pull Clara's hat more firmly into place. He feels his brother tense beside him and wonders what Dean's seeing, tries to discern anything wrong at all.

"C'mon, man," says Dean, like Sam's being slow, or an ass, as Karen takes her girls by their hands and walks them in the direction of the bus stop. "Don't you—I mean, come on."

"Don't I _what_?" Sam asks, and Dean doesn't say anything back.

:::

One night in November, just as Sam is starting to fall asleep, he hears his brother fumbling around in the kitchen. He stumbles from the bed, opens the door a sliver, calls out a bleary, "Dean?"

"Back to bed, Sammy," says Dean, "I'm just checking one more time. Don't worry, you're room is good."

"Dean, you don't—"

"Dad said to check one more time," says Dean, and Sam's stomach does something wriggly and unpleasant before Dean is making a familiar little shushing noise and pushing Sam's bedroom door shut.

:::

A few days before Thanksgiving Sam goes into Dean's bedroom to tell him he's slept through the alarm, again, and that he's going to be late for work. He finds Dean on the floor next to the bed, clutching at his ears and squeezing his eyes shut.

He's on the ground in a second, pulling Dean's hands from his ears, trying to grip his chin and force him to focus. Dean is shaking his head, blinking up at Sam, looking well and truly terrified in a way that is foreign and alien and _frightening_, his lips working soundlessly and his chin trembling.

"Dean, man, talk to me," Sam whispers, feeling useless, and then he says it again and again until Dean blinks up at him, seems to focus, his eyes still huge and shining.

"Dean," says Sam, and Dean pulls his hand from Sam's slackened grip and grabs ineffectively at Sam's collar, finds a grip on the back of his neck and holds on.

"I'm right here," says Sam, and it must have been the right thing because Dean swallows and nods and pulls himself to his feet. Sam insists he get back into bed then goes and calls in sick on Dean's behalf, and when he gets back there's the ghost of a cocky grin on Dean's face, which Sam isn't sure he finds particularly reassuring.

:::

Dean isn't sleeping. He stays up all night with the guns, taking them apart and cleaning them and Sam took all the ammo a long time ago and that doesn't stop him.

Dean is hearing things in the walls and doesn't seem to trust that Sam is really talking to him half the time. Sam remembers what this is like, in pieces, on edges, and for the first time in years his heart truly aches for Cas. He could use some back-up just now, but the fact remains the only people on earth who have a hope of understanding Sam and Dean are Sam and Dean.

But Sam doesn't really understand Dean, not like he once did, and Dean never seems quite sure of Sam anymore, which isn't new, but it hurts nonetheless.

:::

Dean won't shut up about Karen being _off_. Sam reminds Dean there are no demons and Dean doesn't appear to hear him. Sam helps Ally and Clara carve pumpkins and Dean tells him he's losing it.

Sam watches Karen one morning as she marches her kids to the bus stop, tilts his head and squints and convinces himself she looks like Meg.

:::

Dean quits work, and on the stays in bed for a week. The yawning hole in Sam's chest expands, and he finds himself wishing, for the first time in a decade, for their father. Not because Dad would know what to do any better than Sam would, but just because Dad is the second-solidest thing Sam ever knew next to Dean. The world might fall apart and crash around his ears, but John Winchester would stand with his feet planted, in a stand-off with the world, and keep his voice even all the while. Sam, for all he has become so like his father, can't do that, never could.

It's the beginning of December, and Sam is in the kitchen, studying his coffee cup. Through the door, Dean makes a little noise that might be a whimper and Sam screws up his face, hates himself for staying where he is. It doesn't matter, he tells himself, going in there won't help anything. It hasn't. He's been in and out all day, trying to talk to Dean, to reassure him there's nobody there and nothing under his skin, between hiding the knives and the razors and worrying about the bills and wanting his _dad_. It hasn't helped.

"Please," gasps Dean, wetly, through the door, and Sam is lost.

:::

Ten years ago, Sam would have made a concentrated effort to pull his head out of his ass, get over his hang-ups and help his brother. He'd have found _something_, back then, he'd have tried, at least, but that kid with half a prayer of saving the world is so far gone Sam can't even really make him out anymore. Anyways, there's nothing, no one, no way to undo it or fix it or even address it. There's no definitive _it_, even, just Dean, who was so lost even before Hell and the fallout. Sometimes when he's trying to sleep Sam recalls River Grove, Croatoan's testing ground, remembers Dean's suicidal determination, the way he'd shrugged, quirked his face and said he was tired. He wonders if he lost Dean right then and there, and feels like a traitor for thinking it.

:::

Dean has a string of lucid days in mid-December and Sam is so happy he's practically giddy. He drags Dean to dinner, and then to buy Christmas wreathes since they don't have room for a tree. Dean is surly but obliging, and Sam starts convincing himself they're okay.

Then they're on their way home one night when Dean turns and starts yelling at a stranger to_ quit fucking following us_, and Sam has to drag him into an alley and out of harm's way and gets an elbow to the face for his troubles. They tussle and he lands on top of Dean in the slushy, shallow snow, holding his wrists and wondering vindictively if Dean ever regrets teaching him to fight so well.

Then the thin, miserable noises Dean are making penetrate the ringing in his ears, and the horrible muffled stillness of the snowy evening suffocates him for a moment, and he pulls Dean to his feet and all but drags him back to the car, apologizing softly all the way. Dean doesn't appear to hear him, but when they get back to the apartment he mumbles something that sounds like "sorry Sammy" before he sets to checking the salt lines.

:::

Two nights after Christmas Sam gets home from work to find Ally and Clara, the landlady's daughters, standing boot-deep in the snow, holding onto one another, red-eyed and terrified, and he knows what's happened before he's even out of the car.

Fighting duel urges to scream and vomit, Sam bolts into Karen's ground floor apartment, finds his brother pinning the landlady—_goddammit, Dean, really?_—to the wall and shouting an exorcism, more focused and together than Sam's seen him in weeks.

Karen is sobbing and Dean is yelling and Sam is rooted to the spot, watching as she whips her head back and forth and begs, imagines for a moment he sees something flicker in her eyes—

And then he grabs Dean and drags him off, and Karen slumps to the floor and she's crying and for another instant Sam is sure some billow of black smoke has just left her but _that isn't right_, and Dean is yelling and Sam is just pulling him bodily away, grateful for once that Dean never fucking eats or sleeps anymore, grateful he's easy to overpower, and Karen gives a dry sob and Sam swears he smells sulfur.

Dean is making a sound somewhere between hollering and sobbing, and he thinks his brother's gone crazy, which almost makes Sam want to laugh, but instead he tightens his grip on Dean, seizes his collar like he's a schoolboy and manhandles him all the way into the parking lot, past the hysterical little girls in the parking lot and into the car, this last vestige of their last life, of some peace they might have once attained.

Dean goes quiet as Sam pulls out of the lot and drives, not caring where as long as it's _away_, speeding and swerving with reckless abandon, and he's miles away and out on the empty highway before Dean has resumed his semi-frantic fingernail-picking and Sam remembers he's just left behind an apartment and everything he owns is no longer piled in the car. He pulls over and rests his head on the steering wheel, doesn't cut the engine, tries to think over the rushing blood in his ears.

The _flick-flick _of Dean's incessant picking ceases, and then there's a bracing hand on Sam's shoulder, moving to the base of his neck. "It's alright, Sammy," says Dean roughly, "I know, okay. I know you liked her. I'm not mad."

Sam, suddenly more exhausted than he's ever been in his life, turns his head without raising it, rests his cheek on the wheel and looks at Dean, who has the smallest bud of a smile on his face. "Yeah?" he says, thinking Dean probably has a lot of reasons to be mad at him just now.

"Yeah. I never stay mad at you," says Dean, simply, and he gives a little tug and Sam lets his head fall on Dean's shoulder like they're children. This used to be home and safety, this car with his head on Dean's shoulder, breathing Dean's sweat-power-and-oil smell, and beneath that, the scrubby-sweetness that was only Dean's. It's been years since he's done this—decades, he realizes distantly as he watches the light snow dance in the headlights and listens to the low, familiar hum of the Impala's engine. The thought makes him suddenly, profoundly sad.

Dean must have noticed, because his breath hitches a bit and he tightens his arm around his brother. "It's okay, Sammy," says Dean quietly, "I'll fix it, and it'll be over."


End file.
